PM introduces NDIS bill to parliament

The first stage of a scheme promising Australia's disabled "the care and support they need over their lifetimes" has been launched by Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Ms Gillard on Thursday told parliament the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) would transform the lives of people with disability, their families and carers.

Watched by about 60 disability advocates from the public gallery, who clapped and waved at the end, Ms Gillard was introducing a bill to set up the NDIS.

The prime minister said that every 30 minutes on average someone in Australia was diagnosed with a significant disability, but only the wealthy could afford the necessary costs of lifetime care.

She said the current system reacted to crisis and meted out support rationed by arbitrary budget allocations, not real human needs and it must be replaced.

Ms Gillard said the legislation was complex.

"Yet at its heart is a "very simple moral insight: disability can affect any of us and therefore it affects all of us," she said.

The bill's two main purposes are to establish the NDIS framework and set up its Launch Transition Agency, which will operate the first stage of the scheme in five locations around Australia starting in July next year.

The first stage of the scheme will cost $1 billion over four years.

The government is proceeding with care.

It will refer the bill to a Senate committee for detailed consideration and continue public consultations and work with the states and territories.

It intends to put the final version of the bill to a vote next May.

The bill establishes the objects and general principles underpinning the scheme, which Ms Gillard said was "designed to ensure that people with disability can access reasonable and necessary supports, that there is an assurance of support over a person's lifetime, and that the scheme remains sustainable over the long term".

It sets out how the transition agency will operate and how people will be able to access its services.

Other parts of the bill deal with NDIS governance, protection of personal information, rights to review decisions and how the scheme will interact with other compensatory bodies, such as those involved with motor vehicle and workplace accidents.

The scheme will be reviewed after two years of operation.

Ms Gillard said that when the dry legal words of the legislation were translated into action, the lives of thousands of Australians would be changed lastingly and for the better.

She hailed the scheme as "the greatest change to Australian social policy in a generation".

"The NDIS will stand alongside the minimum wage, the age pension, Medicare and universal superannuation as one of the great Labor pillars of social justice and opportunity for all Australians," she said.

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